Facing the Moon: Songs of the Diaspora
“We are all immigrants
Facing the Moon
Strangers, clasping our children
To our bodies”
Harmony with our female ancestors. Harmony within ourselves. The harmony of new encounters —vibrations we create between each other like tones interacting in the air. Harmony that is “creative and procreative.”
San Francisco’s poet-laureate Genny Lim turns her gaze to the full moon at Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. Voices of mothers and daughters, across continents and generations, anchor this multimedia performance with new music by Chinese-diaspora composers Theresa Wong, Vivian Fung and Meilina Tsui. Del Sol Quartet centers the collaboration, building on their transformative Angel Island Project, with a theatrical visual experience by Olivia Ting and Mark Hellar. The musicians’ own histories, gathered through Genny Lim’s interviews, build connections between the musical sounds and Lim’s poetry.
“Why do we leave our homes?
How do we find harmony with our ancestors and within ourselves?
How can we join voices in chorus to forge a better future? ”
“Memory is an immigrant
who carries the burden of the past
She is the conscience that won’t forget
The truth of history suppressed
The hope despair denied
The rebel, the outlaw, the exile
Who spurns flattery, deception
She holds the rope, the strand, the thread
That binds the whole cloth
That gathers the music, laughter and joys”
an excerpt from Amnesia by Genny Lim
“Before there was much of anything, there was music, there was sound, there was a sound of our voice, there was the sound of our feet, there was the sound of our heartbeat and together we make sound together, together we make sound and we, we create something magical. This was the original magic. This was the original spirit, and we need to, we need this for each other. We need this to find a future.”
Artist Bios
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Genny Lim is the first Chinese American poet to serve as San Francisco’s Poet Laureate. Former San Francisco Arts Commissioner and SF Jazz Poet Laureate, she has impacted the artistic community as poet, playwright, performer, teacher, and collaborator. She is the author of five poetry collections and an anthology of Senior Asian American memories. Her award-winning play Paper Angels, set at the Angel Island immigration barracks, was the first Asian American play to air on PBS’s American Playhouse and was produced throughout the U.S., Canada, and China. She is notably co-author of Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island.
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Lynn Huang is a dancer, writer, and GYROTONIC(R) trainer. Originally from New York City, she arrived in San Francisco via Beijing, where she studied ethnic minority dance at Minzu University of China on a Fulbright grant. Trained in ballet, modern, and Chinese dance, she holds a BA in English literature from Barnard College, and has danced with New York based HT Chen & Dancers, compani javedani, among others and has performed throughout the US and Beijing. She currently dances with Lenora Lee Dance.
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JUNO Award-winning composer Vivian Fung has a unique talent for combining idiosyncratic textures and styles into large-scale works, reflecting her multicultural background. NPR calls her “one of today’s most eclectic composers” and The Philadelphia Inquirer praises her “stunningly original compositional voice.” This is supported by many of her works, including Clarinet Quintet: Frenetic Memories, a reflection on her travels to visit minority groups in Yunnan, China; Earworms, commissioned by Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, which musically depicts our diverted attention spans and multi-tasking lives; and The Ice Is Talking for solo percussion and electronics,commissioned by the Banff Centre,using three ice blocks to illustrate the beauty and fragility of our environment.
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Meilina Tsui is a Kazakhstan-born, Hong Kong-American composer, pianist, and educator based in Orlando, Florida. She is the first classical composer of Dungan descent whose music has been gaining international recognition. Tsui’s works explore her mixed heritage and uniquely intertwine elements of East Asian, Central Asian, and Western cultures. Described as "irresistible and emotionally convincing" (The Aspen Times), “high-spirited, lively, and colorful” (Texas Classical Review), her music has been commissioned and performed by Houston Grand Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Aspen Music School & Festival
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Theresa Wong is a composer, cellist, vocalist, and intermedia artist active at the intersection of composition, improvisation, and the synergy of multiple disciplines. A 2024 Guggenheim Fellow in music composition, her works include Fluency of Trees for solo cello and voice which premiered at the Other Minds Festival in 2022, She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees, commissioned by pianist Sarah Cahill for The Future Is Female project, and Harbors, co-composed with Long String Instrument inventor Ellen Fullman and chosen as one of The Wire’s top 50 releases of 2020.
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Cellist of the Del Sol Quartet since 2010, Kathryn has established herself as an important voice in the contemporary music world, as musician, collaborator and curator. Kathryn’s electrifying performances are characterized by a dancer’s sense of rhythm and captivating theatricality. As curator, Kathryn has shaped Del Sol’s local scene for years with her series “Soundings” and “Golden Arts Society,” as well as co-curated the 2017 Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music. She has produced many of Del Sol’s major projects and festivals, such as ANGEL ISLAND, Whole Sol Festival, and Del Sol Days, and directed many collaborations with both the Last Hoisan Poets and Angel Island Concert Series. A sought-after teacher and chamber music coach, Kathryn maintains a private studio focusing on adult amateurs, ranging from Fermilab physicists to Apple accountants to ferry boat captains, and was recently featured on CelloBello. A native of historic Concord, Massachusetts, Kathryn holds degrees from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
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Jasmine Galante is a New York based multi-hyphenate producer, arts administrator, composer, vocalist, and playwright. Passionate about supporting bold new works and artist-led processes, she’s worked on new music-theater productions with organizations including Beth Morrison Projects, Heartbeat Opera, On Site Opera, and Spoleto Festival USA. She approaches the creative process as a form of community building, centering empathy and curiosity to bridge diverse perspectives toward a common artistic goal. Galante currently serves as the creative producer for the upcoming premiere of Del Sol Quartet’s Facing the Moon: Songs of the Diaspora and as the associate producer for the 2026 PROTOTYPE Festival. Equally at home as a creative, she is a composing member of the 2024–2026 Experiments in Opera Writers’ Room, a Choral Scholar at Trinity Church NYC, and performs with Cantori New York. Galante is a proud alumna of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, OAcademy Music Conservatory, and Beth Morrison Projects’ Producer Academy.
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Mark is a creative technology consultant for cultural institutions throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond and owner of Hellar Studios LLC. He specializes in innovative yet practical digital media and software-based solutions for multimedia artists and the institutions that support their work, with an emphasis on developing systems and best practices for exhibition, documentation, and long term preservation. Before opening Hellar Studios LLC in 2009, he worked as a systems architect at the Tides Foundation, digital studio manager at the San Francisco Art Institute, and as the digital media specialist at Bay Area Video Coalition. Mark is currently working on new media conservation initiatives at SFMOMA, including the conservation and care of their software-based artworks. He is also the software developer for the studio of artist Lynn Hershman Leeson and oversaw the installation of her retrospective at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in 2014. Mark is an advisory committee member for the Digital Repository for Museum Collections at MoMA and has presented on the production and conservation of software-based artworks at Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institute,Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, DOCAM research alliance, and the American Institute of Conservation. He is also faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute and teaches on the topics of virtual reality, augmented reality, and physical computing.
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Olivia Ting’s fascination with moving images stems from her hearing impairment; she is deaf in one ear and has 22% hearing in the other. Without hearing aids, she perceives nearly no sounds, so the movements stand in for the audio that she is familiar with, but hears and not hears. Formerly a pre-med major at Pomona College, she went on to a second degree in graphic design at Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. She worked as a graphic designer for brand agencies and design boutiques in New York City for several years before returning to San Francisco, where her work expanded to collaborative video projections with dance choreographers and museum exhibits.
In addition to theater work, Olivia continues to work as a graphic and video media designer. Some of her clients include San Francisco Dance Center, San Francisco Performances, Brooklyn Children’s Museum and San Jose Children's Discovery Museum. She was commissioned to design a permanent exhibit video projection for part of Oakland Museum of California’s Natural History Gallery which re-opened their doors after extensive remodeling in June 2013. In 2016 she collaborated with architect Annette Jannotta on an SFAC commission for the pilot entryway installation of their new gallery space in War Memorial Hall in San Francisco. She received her MFA Art Practice from U.C. Berkeley and is currently freelancing and developing new work reconnecting with her music background.
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Nichole Kreglow is a Fashion and Costume Designer, Wardrobe and Prop Photo Stylist, and Musician who grew up in San Diego but is currently based out of in Oakland, CA. Her style aesthetic usually involves a blend of vintage and modern, thoughtfully designed pieces. She always seeks to find beauty in the out-of-the-ordinary. Her obsessions include mid-century art, architecture, furniture, and vintage clothing. She has a deep love for 1960’s R&B girl groups and 1990's Brit Pop and Shoegaze music. She sings and plays guitar and keyboard/synthesizer in a San Rafael-based band called Nyte Skye.ion
FOR PRESENTERS
This is a modular program and can be modified to the needs of the presenter and venue. Please contact us to discuss possibilities.
String quartet-only
String quartet plus poet
String quartet and poet plus a multimedia experience
This project is made possible in part by a grant from The Creative Work Fund (a program of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund that also is supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation), the California Arts Council (a state agency), the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, and Grants for the Arts.
